


Get the Joke

by KittySmith



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Abner's just trying to be ok, Gen, Harley's an intelligent person and also a dick, Humor, Just call him the Villains' Alfred, Ridiculousness, Swearing, all platonic all the time, because screw mimicking an already iconic version of the Joker, close enough, everyone's a little creepy, everyone's a little ooc, it's just for funsies and lols, kidnapping an average joe, non-explicit violence, not really Stockholm syndrome, the Joker is a dick let's get this straight, the usual familial themes you can find in all my shit, this is a Joker with brand new quirks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-01 11:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittySmith/pseuds/KittySmith
Summary: Average teenager Abner Salts did all the right things. He listened to the most up to date news. He avoided areas that were a bit too gentrified. He never stuck his nose where it didn't belong.So why did he end up locked in the back of a van with a pair of live hyenas?Join one random Gotham citizen with no powers, no underlying psychoses, and nothing all that special about him in his efforts to survive the Joker and Harley Quinn with his sanity intact.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I was never going to post this. It's entirely self indulgent weirdness! Don't expect updates at any sort of frequency lol  
> Additionally I give literally no fucks about the canonical relevance or accuracy of almost anything since I've, by this point, mixed every Batman universe together in my head into an unintelligible mush :) The animated series in which the Joker at one point defenestrates Harley is the one I remember with the most clarity, if you NEED a frame of reference to critique by.
> 
> You can thank or blame Robin Lynn Smith on fanfiction.net for this being put online

“Hey, wanna see somethin’ cool?” a girl’s voice called out from across the street. I glanced around idly for whomever she was talking to, but there was no one on the street except us. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign. I pointed at myself incredulously, and the blonde nodded, winking at me and crooking a finger.

“I’m good,” I said, holding my hands up in denial and preparing to walk a little faster away.

The smile dropped from her face with a huff and she shouted, “Babies!”

Growling is not a good sound.

Turning slowly, I was met with two pairs of yellow-brown eyes in the faces of two angry-looking hyenas. Even the stupidest kids knew what that meant. The Joker was back in town – er, out of Arkham - with his crazy lackeys. And it looked like I was going to be part of a joke. Fantastic. Maybe this would be another game-like joke, and I’d have a chance to go free- or at least live.

The hyenas prowled forward and I stumbled back from them, tripping over the curb and landing on my ass in the street, little bits of broken glass and pebbles scraping into my palms. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Get in the truck, pumpkin,” the girl replied cheerily, and I scrambled to obey. Screw the whole _don’t go to a second location with villains_ rule. The Joker’s henchmen didn’t care where they killed you. Sometimes, though, the Joker let people go for “good behavior.” Apparently, the idea of acting as warden tickled his funny bone enough to save a couple lives.

The girl let the hyenas jump in after me, putting them between the door and myself. Cold against my back, I pressed to the metal wall furthest from death and freedom as she got into the cab of the truck and put on a baseball cap.

“You know much about my babies?” She asked, curiously, and, not getting a response, proceeded to fill me in on Bud and Lou’s various idiosyncrasies. And baby stories. And funny moments. And how she’d bonded with them. And how cute they were. An hour of this.

Even Bud and Lou looked a little embarrassed, though no less threatening.

Finally, something distracted her, “-and then Lou… but _who_ is that _sexy_ hitchhiker?” I could hear a smile in her voice as the truck stopped and the door opened, another person settling in the passenger’s seat.

“Nice to see you out and about, Harley.”

My heart stopped. I’d only heard that voice on TV, sometimes the radio, but every native to Gotham had it etched in their memory. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back against the coolness of the wall. This was the Joker and Harley Quinn. Not just nameless thugs taking a hostage for a game. What could they possibly want from me?

“I caught a little birdy where you told me, Mistah J,” Harley chirped in the front seat, and the heart I’d thought stopped already froze to a hard lump in my chest. Did they think I was an informant of some kind? Was I that screwed? I should’ve taken that ride Dick offered me today. Feeling uncomfortable in the rich kid’s limo would’ve been a thousand times better than this. I should’ve swallowed my pride and just done it. We were friends, after a fashion; we usually walked the same direction home together, and he’d _told me_ he was worried about me going alone, but I’d just said I’d see him tomorrow and set off down the street. Now I couldn’t recall what in the world I could have been thinking.

Pride before a fall?

“Good _girl_ , Harley,” the Joker cooed, as if praising a particularly intelligent dog, “We’ll have to give him a suitable cage for his visit.”

Harley hummed in agreement, before something occurred to her, “Oh, Mistah J, did I tell you that joke I heard the other day about the bird and the crocodile?”

Okay, this was starting to sound personal. I really hoped I was misreading the situation. They proceeded to tell macabre, gore-filled jokes about birdy victims and I began to feel that there was no possible way _to_ misread it. A sharp turn had the hyenas growling and laughing threateningly again.

“Hey, boys,” I crooned quietly, hysterically, to the hyenas in front of me. “It’s okay; please don’t kill me; you’re alright.” They didn’t seem swayed, but I kept talking, keeping my voice low and calm, “You’re good hyenas, aren’t you? Bud? Lou?” Ears twitched at their names, but the angry little laughs and hoots didn’t stop. What had Harley called them? “Um, good babies. It’s okay. Don’t kill me. Bud and Lou are _good_ babies. Harley just wants you to keep me company, right? Yeah, and you’re doing that so well. So well. Good Bud. Good Lou.”

If I didn’t think it was impossible, I would’ve said the two hyenas looked actually amused by my efforts to calm them. At least they didn’t look murderous anymore.

“Good Bud; good Lou; don’t kill me,” I repeated quietly, keeping up the mantra for the fifteen-ish minutes until the truck screeched to a halt, sending everything in the back, hyenas and all, sliding forward into a pile of yelps and flailing limbs. Some of each belonged to me.

At last I freed myself from the pile without being caught on sharp teeth more than twice (rips in my sleeves and one long, bleeding set of lines on an arm from where the teeth scraped by), and the doors to the truck’s back opened. Harley grabbed my arm and slapped a hand over my eyes, leading me with a constant stream of chatter up a set of stairs and into some building or another.

“Come on in, little bird,” a low, amused voice invited, before grabbing the front of my shirt and looking at me too closely for comfort. Man, he needed to brush his teeth. The Joker’s eyes met my own and the amusement faded. “Brown eyes,” he muttered, before turning to Harley, and repeating, irritably, “Brown eyes!”

“They... aren’t blue?” Harley giggled nervously, “Whoops. I went _right_ where you told me and snatched the brown-haired boy _right_ when you said.”

“It’s. The wrong. One,” the Joker enunciated clearly, throwing me to the side, “Get rid of it.”

That sounded… Final.

“Wait-wait-wait!” I exclaimed, grabbing the leg of the Joker’s pants without thinking when he made to walk away. He looked down at the contact with an exaggerated frown and I released him as if he were hot iron on my skin, scrambling to a seated position, “I can be useful!”

“Lots of people can be useful,” the Joker waved a hand at the thugs lounging about the apartment around us, talking in hushed voices and occasionally testing things on each other, “But I don’t have a use for _you_.”

“I can…” I looked around the messy, pizza-box-laden apartment, filled with masked men and women doing nothing about it and exclaimed, “I can cook and clean! I can- you’ll never even have to let me in on your plans or anything because I won’t be a part of them! I’ll… I’ll…” The Joker was leaning in with an expressionless face and I shrank away from the intimidating figure, “Just please don’t kill me.”

A moment of silence passed as the Joker stared at me. Finally, his eyes flicked to the stacks of pizza boxes and he shrugged, straightening to give me space to breathe, “Fine. You’re our captive now. Cook and clean for your life.” Just as my heart began beating again, the Joker paused at the doorway, Harley hanging off his arm, and grinned at me, “And here, I was _going_ to let you go.” He waved jauntily, “We’ll be back for dinner!”

Shit.

“Would you really have-“ But the Joker had already swung the door shut behind him, and the nearby thugs were snickering. My shoulders slumped and I dragged myself to my feet, addressing the laughers in a pathetically small voice, “…Where’s the cleaning supplies?”

As it turned out, the base was woefully unequipped for any sort of household maintenance, and I cajoled and wheedled a thug in a sad clown mask into going out to get me the things I needed, breathing a sigh of relief and choking back a sob of joy when he didn’t just shoot me in the eye. Thankfully, I’d checked the fridge before making said list, or I’d have to have begged him to go out a second time for groceries. It seemed Sad Clown was somewhere in the middling to high ranks in the thug hierarchy because he got a woman wearing an eyeless clown mask and a man in an angry mask to accompany him with minimal bullying. While they were gone, I gathered pizza boxes and broken bottles and other, unmentionable refuse and piled it in what was rapidly becoming the “garbage corner.” A helpful henchman pointed out that they _did_ have garbage bags (probably for more unsavory purposes) and I was able to bag and tie off a full four bags of grossness before Sad Clown and unwilling victims stumbled back in the door, laden with the fruits of their shopping experiences.

Looking between the food and the cleaning supplies, I quickly prioritized. Just as I’d set _crying and losing all sense of sanity_ at the bottom of my to-do list with the power of denial, I figured cleaning out the mold and other things growing in the fridge was to be first. There was a pot of soil on the lowest shelf that I intended to throw away, but Sad Clown caught my wrist.

“Not best idea,” he rumbled in a Russian accent, “Poison Ivy leaves this for Harley.”

“O-oh,” I stuttered, putting it gingerly on the counter when he released me, “Is there anything else in there I need to worry about?”

“Just make sure not to let mold eat you,” he patted my shoulder and wandered off.

It wasn’t a joke.

Following my epic battle with the carnivorous mold, the fridge was clean enough to pile the perishable groceries into without worrying they’d be inedible in an hour. I hadn’t exactly made a head count of the henchmen, but I didn’t think all of the Joker’s employees would be allowed in, and from what I’d seen while tidying, there were maybe twenty in the large apartment at any given time. So I planned for thirty. As you do.

Before I could do any cooking, however, the kitchen needed to be a little less… Toxic. So the next two and a half hours were spent rediscovering the original colors of the kitchen. While before everything was in shades of grey, black, and brown, but the end of my marathon, frantic scrubbing, the counters were a pale blue and the stove was white. The backsplash was some sort of ruddy orange color and even the cabinets were actually more of a beige than camo-grey.

“This has to be fast,” I whispered to the empty room- the thugs had fled earlier, at the very sight of sponges and soaps. Cleaning only the dusty dishes and utensils I needed, I threw together a casserole and an instant pudding on the stove. Hopefully, the chocolate would hold off the Joker and Harley until the actual food was done. I didn’t think the Joker was one to stand by tradition and demand the meal before dessert, but I prayed, for the first time in years, that the chocolate pudding would distract him. After all, who didn’t like pudding?

Well.

 _He’d_ strolled in with Harley bouncing after him and thrown his jacket at me while I’d been wiping the grime off a mirror as the pudding cooled and the casserole cooked. Scrambling, I put it on the coatrack just in time to catch the bazooka he tossed afterwards.

“That’s a joke bazooka,” Harley informed me sweetly, poking my nose, “So don’t get ideas!”

It was as heavy as a real one. Well, I assumed it was, anyway. I nodded mutely and leaned it on the wall by the door.

The Joker was eyeing the place speculatively, “Things look kind of…”

“I had to wait for cleaning supplies,” I blurted fearfully, “So I focused on the kitchen and just tided everywhere else, but I’ll definitely finish by tomorrow.”

He cleared his throat, though I noticed a flicker of misplaced surprise, “Yeah. You get one more chance, kid.” The three of us stood in silence, with only the quiet murmur of socializing thugs in the background, until the Joker grew impatient, “Well? Food?”

I jumped a little, “Right. This way.” I’d prepared massive amounts of pudding and divvied it up into newly cleaned bowls. Sad Clown had even silently helped out, perhaps wanting his portion a little sooner. “The um, the casserole’s not done _yet,_ but there’s pudding while you wait!” I couldn’t help the way the words butted up against one another and I’d backed up against the wall while the Joker looked over the bowls sitting on the island counter.

“ _Pudding_ ,” he said flatly, and his eye twitched.

“Pudding!” Harley exclaimed, “Pudding for my puddin’; oh, you charmer!” She ruffled my hair, “Mistah J _loves_ pudding!”

The continuing tick did not reassure me that Harley’s words were correct.

The Joker brooded quietly while Harley and the others retrieved their portions and left, sitting on the counter once it was clear and fixing me with a baleful eye as I checked on the casserole.

“Don’t make pudding again,” he informed me, “Harley’s delusional.”

“Yes, sir,” I conceded, hoping that was the end of it.

“She’s got this fascination with pudding she’s projected onto me,” he continued, still in that flat, didactic tone.

“Yes, sir,” I repeated, pulling the casserole out of the oven and setting it on the stove top, using my jacket as hot pad.

There was a beat, and then the Joker was leaning over me curiously, with a spoon untainted by pudding, “I’ll test this.”

“It’s hot,” I warned but he’d already scooped up a mouthful, chewing thoughtfully.

“Needs sprinkles,” he decided, mood swinging violently towards cheerful, and he laughed as he searched the still sparse cabinets.

“They’re over here,” I said, pulling out the only box that had been in the cabinets before Sad Clown’s shopping spree. That did answer the question of why they were there.

He took the box and sat cross-legged on the floor like a child. When he saw I was still standing he gestured impatiently for me to join him, patting the space beside him. I sat hastily next to him and he spared me an amused glance before digging into the box, pulling out and tossing away various containers, before he seemed to come to an impasse. “What do you think,” he held the two cylinders next to each other, “poison or non-toxic?” One had a large skull and crossbones emblazoned on the side while the other was an innocent, everyday brand name filled with spider sprinkles. He looked at me seriously, “Your choice.”

“Non-toxic,” I replied weakly, “Aren’t you going to be eating it, too?”

“Ah, good reasoning,” he laughed, and slapped me on the back, “Spiders, it is, then!”

His grin was more terrifying in person than in wanted pictures or on the TV, and I wondered if that was a test- and whether I’d passed or failed. Probably it had just been a whim. Probably.

While I portioned out the casserole into returning pudding bowls, the Joker followed along behind me, humming a tuneless melody, and giving each bowl its due in sprinkles.

When everyone else was fed, he held out a clean, empty bowl and the sprinkles container expectantly. Without speaking, I took the bowl and filled it, before hesitantly receiving the sprinkles and scattering them over the top.

“That’s for you,” he snickered when I made to hand it back, grabbing the casserole dish and making off with what was left, sprinkle-free. His laughter trailed behind him.

The kitchen was finally empty, and my muscles went limp as I slid to the floor, still holding the bowl in my trembling hands. It felt like I’d been circled by a lion and it had decided it wasn’t hungry today. Pulling the bowl toward my chest, the tears finally came. In a clean kitchen in a supervillain’s lair, a tired nobody sobbed into his sprinkles.

The moment of weakness couldn’t last forever though, as I reminded myself when the crying faded to hiccups. I’d promised to get the apartment clean by tomorrow, which meant working through the night. Unless the Joker decided to chain me up somewhere, there was no reason not to start soon.

Even as I gathered my determination, tear tracks drying on my cheeks, my stomach gurgled for my attention. Right.

I looked distastefully at the sprinkle-covered casserole and remembered, again, how the Joker had kept his own portion sprinkle-free by simply grabbing what was left and making a run for it. Not that he’d needed to. There wasn’t anyone here willing to stop him. I doubt even Harley would’ve lifted a finger if she thought it unfair.

Snorting, I realized that I was thinking about _unfair sprinkles_ when I should be fearing for my life.

 _Just eat_ , I admonished myself bitterly, _and clean._ He didn’t have to give me anything, after all. I should take it while I have it.

It was both worrying and reassuring that he’d allow me food.

Reassuring because he rarely fed prisoners he intended to kill.

Worrying because he rarely fed prisoners he intended to let go.

I didn’t know why I was fixating on this, as I numbly shoveled sprinkle-casserole into my mouth and the thugs filed in and out, leaving empty bowls on the counter.

It was barely mentioned in news reports, except as an aside. Police Commissioner Gordon saying, “…I knew he wouldn’t keep me long. No food, no water; either he’d let me go or kill me,” kept echoing in my head.

Maybe I remembered a little too much about this, but in Gotham you _paid attention_ to supervillains. We were all well trained- hear a certain name, a certain hot button word on the news, and everyone sprang to attention. Joker card found near a popular restaurant? Wasn’t popular anymore. Plants growing a little too fast at the arboretum? Clear the place out. Rich people gathering in one spot? Good bye, neighborhood.

It was a fact of life that supervillains existed, and that normal people couldn’t do much but stay out of their way. So we did our very best at just that. I listened to all the most up-to-date stations, took all the safest routes. In fact, I had thought I’d been doing a terrific job. Until now.

I finished my bowl and wobbled to my feet. After holding it together all afternoon, letting go seemed to sap the strength out of me, but I managed to take a few piles of bowls to the sink and start scrubbing, anyway. A tuneless humming behind me made my hand tighten on a bowl as the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. The casserole dish was set down and I flinched.

“Don’t worry,” the Joker said gamely, poking my cheek, “You did alright. You get life today.”

“Thank you, sir,” I responded tightly, forcibly relaxing my grip on the bowl and continuing to scrub. The Joker eyed the stack of wet bowls on one side of the sink and the dirty ones on the other side.

“Three!” He bellowed, and I fumbled the bowl I was cleaning, catching it with a sharp exhalation. Sad Clown popped his head in.

“Yes, boss?” A towel was flung unceremoniously across his face.

“Dry,” the Joker informed him, and leaned against the counter with the dirty bowls, watching me clean, arms crossed over his chest. He was smiling, but it was a neutral expression, like a default, and I figured I shouldn’t read into it, “Why do ya keep calling me _sir_?” A snort, “At least Harley calls me Mister J.”

I paused, offering, “Do you _want_ me to-“

“No,” he interceded, eyes wide and a hand out in front of him defensively, “Don’t do that.”

Resuming my cleaning for lack of anything to say, I handed the wet bowl to Sad Clown (Three?) who was making quiet, quick work of the others.

“So,” he drew out the word to an absurd length, “why _sir_?”

“Because you’re in charge?” I replied, unsure what he meant, “Sir?”

“Humph,” he waved at me like it would push the word away, “I don’t like it.”

“I’ll stop then.” If these silences kept growing, I’d finish the dishes and have nowhere to direct my gaze but the unsettling crime boss himself.

“It’s like you don’t know my name,” the Joker complained, as if there hadn’t been several moments of silence, “Just call me Joker; _Jo-ker,_ it’s not that hard. I don’t like feeling anonymous. Boss, if you’re feeling cheeky.”

“Yes, s-,” that was harder to stop than I’d thought, “Um…” The madman had given me options again. Another freaking test? Well… He _was_ the Joker; did he _want_ cheekiness? “Yes, boss.”

An amused expression flitted over his face and he ruffled my hair, “It’ll do.”

Despite what seemed like an end to the conversation, the Joker decided it was time to monologue, and Sad Clown and I continued our task with the rise and fall of the Joker’s rendition of Harley’s reaction to the Batman today supplying the soundtrack.

“Does he always do this?” I murmured to Sad Clown under the cover of a particularly long bout of loud laughter from the Joker.

“Yes,” Sad Clown set aside the newest dry bowl and grabbed the wet one from me, his accent thick with resignation, “Is normal.”

When the Joker grew bored and stalked away muttering about riverbanks, the dishes were just about done and I waved off Sad Clown to finish them on my own. He shrugged and left without any argument. It wasn’t as if he were my friend, or anything, and I didn’t want to get the idea that he might be friendly and have him stab me in the back should I attempt to escape.

If I tried to escape.

“I think I’m stuck,” I whispered to the dishes as I put them away, “until the Joker gets bored with me.” If I just kept myself away from anything important and- well, if I just kept myself out of the way, I wouldn’t learn anything the Joker didn’t want the police knowing about. This apartment didn’t _have_ windows, and I’d had a hand over my face coming in, so there was a bit of a win-lose situation there. On the one hand, if I got a message out somehow, there’d be no way to tell them where I was. On the other, the Joker might eventually let me go if I still didn’t know anything when he got bored. Besides, when it came down to it, I knew I wouldn’t lift a finger to escape unless the Batman was standing in front of me, promising me asylum.

I didn’t want to die.

The desire to live was much stronger than the desire to live free, and unless the Joker took a stronger, more malicious interest in me, I doubted that would change anytime soon. Living here wasn’t too different than in some of the worse foster homes, except I lived in fear of murder instead of a beating. So far. It had only been an afternoon, so for all I knew it could get scarier. Maybe the Joker had an even more twisted side to him he hadn’t shown yet, just waiting for the right captive.

I hoped the idea of killing me never struck him as funny.

Through the night, I cleaned and thought. It was horrifying in a different way from what the Joker inspired in me, the amount of grime and mysterious stains (I shied away from identification) that sank into the walls and floors. There had been a vacuum here even before the shopping trip and I’d gotten that done with the floors, but now I’d turned my attention towards the furniture. I tried to do it early in the night, so I didn’t wake anyone, but it took longer than I thought.

A pillow struck the side of my head, and one of the masked thugs growled in a feminine voice from an open door, “Shut it off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I squeaked, and with that, I was done vacuuming for the night. I turned my hand to shining reflective surfaces and polishing side tables. Then organizing the closet ( _things_ were in there, _crawly, smiley things_ ), and leaving the closet never to return. Then dusting the windowless drapes. Putting all the books upright in the bookcases. Avoiding bedrooms. Scrubbing the bathrooms, with the door open, and gagging on the odor. Sliding empty food and water bowls away from the sleeping hyenas and leaving them sparkling. I eyed the hyenas themselves but decided I was clearly sleep deprived if I thought anyone but Harley was going to bathe them. The list dragged on until what felt like morning, and I lay, motionless, on the floor in a hallway off the main common rooms, reveling in my triumph. It seemed that the entire floor belonged to the Joker – well, probably the whole building, but the entire floor was being used. It was bigger than the _house_ I was being fostered in now. Still, I’d done it. In that moment, the world was mine.

The Joker stepped on me.

“Ow,” I wheezed, and he took his foot off my stomach.

“Whoops,” he giggled, dressed in a ridiculously orange set of pajamas and matching night cap. He’d already put on his makeup for the day, and he reached down to drag me upright. When he pulled his hands away, I swayed, but remained standing.

“Breakfast time,” he sang, ushering my shambling corpse in front of him to the kitchen. In a daze, I made up oatmeal and eggs for twenty-odd criminals and poured orange juice for the Joker, who insisted that his drink match his outfit. There was a dining room I’d cleaned the night before that resembled nothing so much as a decrepit ballroom (no amount of cleaning could change that) and the entire horde fit comfortably at the table. Sad Clown directed me to a chair and put an unclaimed portion in front of me, while the Joker looked pensively at his eating thugs. During this time, Harley wandered in, rubbing her eyes and yawning, before falling on the food like her own hyenas.

“Hand me a newspaper,” he informed me, holding out a hand and making grabby gestures, “and my pipe.”

The pipe, I could do well enough, since I knew where _pretty much_ every knick knack was after all the horrid organizing and cleaning I’d done that night, and I retrieved it, hoping he’d forget the newspaper in the time I was gone.

He puffed on my offering of what turned out to be a bubble pipe and repeated, “Newspaper?”

“We don’t… have one, boss,” I cringed, expecting some sort of pain, but the Joker’s eyes rolled and he poked a nearby thug.

“Go get a newspaper so he can hand it to me,” he demanded, “Honestly, all I want is a perfect scene; does no one understand good entertainment these days?” I murmured something vaguely sympathetic and, encouraged, he ranted on until the thug returned. The poor guy tried to pass the paper to the Joker and the Joker actually scoffed in disgust, gesturing at me. The paper made its way into my hands, and the Joker gave me back the pipe as well, before repeating, “Paper and pipe.”

Dutifully, I pressed them back into his hands, and he blew a few bubbles contentedly as he unfolded the paper.

“ _This_ is what breakfast is supposed to look like,” he told us, and Harley sighed happily at his resulting grin. “Ah, we’re in the paper, Harley,” he mused, and they were quickly absorbed in their own little world. Breakfast continued fairly peacefully after that. For a while.

A masked henchman I hadn’t seen before burst into the dining room, “The fish! Boss, the Batman found an antidote for what we did to the fish!”

There wasn’t even time to register movement before I heard the gunshot and saw the man fall. “Don’t interrupt my scenes,” the Joker told his body coolly, secreting the gun away who-knows-where in his ridiculous orange pajamas with a humorless laugh.

My entire body was cold, and I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d let my guard down until it was back up again and I could feel muscles I didn’t know I had tensed just to the point of pain. Incredibly, I couldn’t stop the thought that I’d _just cleaned those floors_ from circling around and around in my brain.

Even more incredibly, it seemed the Joker and I were on the same wavelength, “Sorry to muss the floors up again, uh, you know I don’t think I ever got your name.” He was clearly addressing me, but I found myself unable to respond.

A thug elbowed me and I replied, dumbly, “Abner. My name is Abner.”

He nodded and sipped his orange juice, “Yeah, I’ll have the idiots that let it in take care of this mess, then, _Ab_ ner _._ ” His voice filled the syllables of my name with too much familiarity to be comfortable, when a man lay dead at the end of the breakfast table. Amusement radiated from him at my blatant fear, “Eat up. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

Apparently, the news that Batman had ruined whatever fish-plan the Joker had put into motion left the Joker entirely free to follow me about after breakfast while I cleared dishes and shambled about the apartment (avoiding the dining room) and picked up whatever new things the thugs had left strewn about.

“Having a captive is sort of like having a child, isn’t it?” The Joker mused, sitting on the arm of a couch while I was sweeping up the newest crud the thugs had tracked in over the course of the morning. I quietly choked on my spit. “Free labor,” the Joker began counting points on his fingers, “completely dependent on you, and forced to be friendly with you no matter what you do.” He was more than a little off on his idea of children, but I wasn’t going to correct him.

“I guess so, boss,” I replied, trying to turn my attention back to the task at hand.

“Harley can never hear of this, though,” he told me seriously, “Or she’ll demand to be your mother and coddle you and teach you about psychology and guns.”

“Psychology and guns?” I echoed, and with no more prompting than that the Joker was telling me the story of how Dr. Harleen Quinzel became the infamous Harley Quinn we all know and fear. A part of me wanted desperately to stop him. Was this common knowledge in the police force? Did they already know who Harley Quinn had been and how she had changed? Was this something the Joker would eventually kill me for knowing? But another part of me was just listening, as the Joker spun his tale.

“She couldn’t resist me, of course,” he was saying, trotting behind me as I carried the dust pan to the trash, “After getting comfy inside my head, I’d been getting into hers, too, you know? Ah, we had such a dance of wits, but I won in the end; I usually do. _Except with Batsy_ ,” the words were like three drops of venom in the folds of a shortcake, “So she cracked open her misconceptions about the world and made up some for me, instead.” His laughter was as manic as usual, “It didn’t take long before my gal bailed me outta there in a way frowned upon by most _law-abiding citizens._ Oh, we took the town by _storm_ .” _Sounds like a love story to me_ , I wanted to say, but I held the sarcasm in, biting my lip. Unfortunately, the mad jester was more observant than he seemed. “Hmmm?” He took my chin in hand, squishing my cheeks, “Were you going to say something? No?”

“It just,” I tried to think of something complimentary, “seems nice to have someone care for you that much.” There we go. It was even true.

“Care for me?” He scoffed and dropped his hand from my face, “She’s obsessed. It’s not exactly healthy, what she does.” A sly grin took over his face, “You’d think she’d know that, being a psychologist, herself, but I guess that’s just my effect on people. Everyone loses their head around me.” He winked, “Maybe you’re next.”

“That would be Stockholm syndrome,” I deadpanned before I could stop myself.

A laugh ripped out of him, almost surprised, “Oh, very good. So you’ll know what it is when it happens to you!” A pat to my cheek, “Gold star, Abner.” He walked away laughing, and a cold shiver went up my spine. Despite the jovial nature of the exchange, in terms of the Joker’s behavior he’d seemed sort of… serious.

 _No_ , I laughed a little under my breath as I moved wearily onto the next chore, _I’m just reading into it. The Joker’s too whim-driven to actually_ plan _to- what?- to gain the loyalty of a nobody he’s got doing chores?_

Although, maybe… Right now, creating a loyal servant _could_ be the Joker’s next whim. When had he _ever_ done something for a _good_ reason? If anything, it seemed like he wanted to spread chaos, maybe make money- though that was debated on the different networks- and make jokes. His jokes weren’t exactly harmless or even very funny; really, I don’t think anyone got them but himself. Still, if the man pointing a gun to your face tells you he’s busy making a joke, most people don’t argue. Since that was essentially the Joker’s relationship with Gotham, we all just lived with his definition.

It just…

Shit. My whole life was shit. Everything that led to this point was steaming, Joker-venom-laced shit.

Why did my family die in Gotham? Couldn’t we have moved to, say, Metropolis, before my parents decided to drop dead of a mysterious disease? It’s not as if we’d been meaning to stay here more than a year, and yet from the age of seven on, I’d been bounced from foster home to foster home in our fair city of crime and grime. I’d lived more of my life here than I had anywhere else. Somehow, I’d even managed to avoid any supervillain confrontations until now. Maybe this was the accumulation of every incident I’d missed or bank robbery I hadn’t been held up in, coming back to haunt me all at once.

“Why me, though?” I whined to myself, shuffling back to put the broom away. I could already hear the Joker shouting, “Lunch!” from the kitchen.

Time passed. I counted days by whatever the Joker called the meals he demanded when he returned. When he was out, the thugs would just shuffle into the kitchen looking pathetic around mealtimes and I would feed them. If he was in, though, each meal was something of a production. A scene from the Joker’s repertoire of ideals. He began placing me at his left, with Harley on his right, and some days it felt like he was having me fill the role of child, other times, that of housewife. Usually, this was when he was annoyed with Harley.

This was one of those days.

“Pass me the butter, dear,” he intoned, and his fingers were wiggling in my face before the sentence was complete. Harley pouted on his other side and gave me the butter dish to pass to him. Quite a lot of redundancy came about due to the Joker’s idiosyncrasies, but it did lend credence to Harley’s frequent accusation of _control freak._ He always added something to each meal he was present for, usually something that ruined it for the rest of us. It was actually one of the few quirks I found amusing rather than terrifying, how he _had_ to have a hand in anything happening in front of him. He really couldn’t leave well enough alone. He patted my cheek in condescending thanks before giving in with a sigh and patting Harley on the head as well. She brightened immediately.

“I really didn’t mean ta let Robin get away,” Harley’s eyes were wide and shining as she leaned into the Joker’s arm, taking the head pat as permission to plead her case, “You know how slippery they are when ya turn your back on ‘em.”

“Yes, well,” he shrugged her off his arm and began to butter his roll, “this isn’t the _first_ time you’ve failed me with the little bird.”

Little bird. The words stopped me dead, fork falling from my fingers. That’s what they called me when they brought me in. Then the Joker had realized my eyes were brown and not- not whatever color they were supposed to be and told Harley to get rid of me and- and- they’d thought I was _Robin_? Robin was _my age_? I’d always thought the ‘boy wonder’ just _looked_ young. Surely, he was older than eighteen. Little did I know.

“Something on your mind?” The Joker’s voice was smooth and dangerous, and strangely loud in the sudden quiet. Oh, no one was speaking anymore. Evidently, dropping your silverware at a table full of criminals when a superhero was mentioned was now _extremely suspicious._

“I just-“ Stammering was my strong suit, “I just realized that you- that you thought I was Robin, b-be-before, which m-means he’s _my_ age.”

“He was even younger when the Batman first started his crusade of reckless endangerment,” the Joker pointed out, resuming the buttering of his roll as the quiet chatter of the thugs trickled back into existence.

 _Younger_? I tried to think of when I’d first heard of Robin, and realized with a shock that I might have still been in middle school. “Holy _crap_ ,” I said, and the Joker began to laugh.

“Don’t worry your little head.” His hand landed between my shoulders and slid to my lower back, the thumb moving up and down in a gesture that, while comforting from _anyone else_ , made my every nerve tingle with fear. The Joker’s grin was _way_ too close for comfort, “I won’t follow in Batsy’s footsteps. Probably.”

A few more days of constant exposure to the Joker made the incident recede in my mind. However, it seemed the Joker had been musing on the idea of my role in his scenes a little longer than I’d anticipated.

It came to a head while the Joker was watching me clean a mirror after some excursion that had brought him home battered and bloody. He frowned abruptly, creasing the dried blood, and asked, “Where have you been sleeping?”

“The… couch, boss,” I replied, pointing at the offending article as if to move his attention away from me, though the subconscious ploy failed to achieve result.

“Hmm,” he grabbed my arm and half-led, half-dragged me down the hall. For a few, fearful seconds, it seemed like he was leading to me to _his_ room- likely for something unsavory with the way he creepily watched everything I did. _He’s straight,_ the rational bit of my mind unaffected by fear reminded me, as the rest was still cringing away from the entire situation, _just a control freak who has to know how everything’s being done_. Instead, he pulled me just past his own door and shoved me in the open door beyond it. “This is yours, now. For some reason, my clowns have left it empty,” he informed me, waving an arm grandly at the bunk bed that was missing a lower mattress and the dresser beside it. Probably it had been left empty  _because_ it was right next to the Joker's room. Glancing thoughtfully down the clothes I’d been wearing for the weeks I’d been there he continued, “Harley will go grab you some other clothes.” He paused, “She can actually go grab _your_ clothes. What was your old address?”

 _My_ old _address?_ This was starting to sound more and more permanent. Still, I gave it to him and he nodded to himself.

For a moment, he looked almost uncomfortable at whatever he was thinking, but he asked, leaning awkwardly on the threshold, “Do you want us to leave your family a message?” Abruptly, the Joker pointed a finger at me, “No hidden codes or nonesuch, or I’ll take your nose off.”

“They’re not my family,” I said, instead of addressing the insanity of hidden codes, “I doubt they care, anyway.” Belatedly, I added, “Boss.”

“Oh,” he was visibly processing this information, before trying at a grin, “So Harley could knock on the door, polite as you please…?”

“Probably, boss,” I agreed, and the Joker shrugged uneasily.

“You should hear what my old man thought of me,” he said, doing that pseudo-comfort-thing with the hand on my back that just made my hackles rise, “Of course, you can’t ask him. Dead men tell no tales and all that.” He seemed to sense the discomfort without enjoying it this time since the hand returned to the back of his own neck as he looked skyward, that oddly exaggerated voice continuing, “Family is just like captivity, anyway.”

That was just a little sad, but I gave him a smile, anyway, “Sure, boss. I should get back to cleaning. Thanks for the room and um, sending Ms. Harley out.”

The spoken gratitude bounced off his shields of denial. “Call her Harley; everyone does,” the Joker corrected absently before leaving the room.

“Okay, boss,” I called after him, glancing around the room one more time before getting back to work.

When I’d finished my daily maintenance, Harley came bursting in that night with a thug in tow and two cardboard boxes, “They said this is all your stuff, Abby-boy!”

I gave the size of the boxes a onceover and nodded, “Looks about right. Thanks, Harley. Sorry the boss had you do it.”

“No problem,” she was smiling that megawatt grin; I knew I was in danger, “It’s like you’re finally coming home, right?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, because disagreeing was not an option. Harley was just as much a murdering supervillain as the Joker.

“So, I was thinking,” she sat on the bed beside me with a thump, “I’ll help you unpack and then we can make plans to spruce the place up!”

“I wouldn’t have time,” I tried to protest, gently, but she stuck her tongue out at me and blew a raspberry.

“Listen to your loving husband,” she scolded, and I fell silent, actually struck dumb by the statement. The thug who’d followed her in was snickering softly and snapped me out of it.

“What?” Trying to inch away was futile when she’d thrown a steel-whip of an arm around my shoulder. My voice climbed an octave, as I repeated, “What?”

“You’re me and Mistah J’s housewife, sort of,” she chirped and I took a moment to remind myself that this woman had a PhD in her field. Then, I could clearly see the mischief in what had seemed to be innocent blue eyes, “Ya do all the cookin’, and cleanin’ and make sure we’re both taken care of…” She trailed off and now that I was in a mind to remember her level of intelligence, I could see she was trying not to laugh from the cheery crinkles that remained at the corner of her eyes. “So’s the least we can do is make sure your room is prettified to your specifications.”

“You do remember I’m being held captive, right?” I reminded her, because this was not what I’d been expecting from life today. I’d been given a room and the material possessions I’d left behind, and I wasn’t in the mindset for any more shocks.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, uncaring, “but so are my babies, technically; even Mistah J, ya know? I mean, pets are captive, kids are captive, even in marriages, the spouses hold each other captive. People just hold on so tight and never let go!” Her eyes grew soft and she began to pet my hair, “Mistah J doesn’t talk about it on accounta’ his _issues_ , but I think he knows, too.” Well, he kind of had said it, actually. Which was all levels of weird.

A growing sense of _this isn't right_ was twisting my stomach into knots, “Isn’t this a little fast?”

“Oh, maybe for you men,” she smiled, fisting her hand in my hair and shaking a little, “Ya got skulls so thick you can block a rock with ‘em. But I knew the minute ya let Mistah J put sprinkles on everyone’s casseroles without a fuss that you were okay.”

I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, but no use upsetting the one currently gripping a handful of my hair, “Thanks, Harley.”

“No problem, babycheeks,” she released me and stood, dancing backward to the door, “Don’t fight the Stockholm!”

“Wait-“ Back to my initial conspiracy theory, then. Agh. I couldn’t wrap my head around _exactly_ what was happening, so I lay back on the bed and gave up. Good night insanity, I’ll see you tomorrow.

And so I did.

“-so we should take him on a heist,” Harley was saying excitedly at breakfast, while I held tight to my serving platter of pancakes to avoid chucking it at her head, “And he can pick out colors and stuff while you guys tell jokes in the rest of the mall.”

“Not a bad plan, Harley,” the Joker began, and my heart dropped. “But you’ve forgotten one minor detail.”

“What?” she asked eagerly, leaning in, which, of course, was what the Joker was waiting for to shout at close quarters.

“Abner’s a hostage; he’ll _run_ for the _hills_ if he gets out of here!” Yes, I’m a flight risk, definitely. Don’t send me out where there are guns.

“Pshaw,” she waved this off, “puddin’, you _know_ we’ve all agreed we’re practically family, now.”

“It’s been five weeks,” the Joker tried to intercede. My hero.

“Exactly!” She exclaimed, “Five _whole_ weeks, and has he _once_ tried to signal the Batman? Given out a secret code to a spy in our organization?” Harley’s voice lowered to a purr, “He _didn’t_ even take you up on your offer to send a message to his old family.” Clearly, she had not been filled in on the Joker’s and my conversation completely or she’d have known they _were not my family._ The Joker was quiet and Harley moved in for the kill, “Come on, puddin’, our little housewife needs to have a proper room.” Despite a glare from both of us at our respective continued titles, I could _feel_ the Joker caving.

“But what if I was just… just waiting for the right moment?” I put in, adding belatedly, “Boss?”

Harley gave the Joker a look that said, very clearly, _See?_

“Whatever!” He threw up his hands, “It’s your responsibility to make sure he doesn’t run off to the Batman.”

“What about the police?” I asked, forgetting the precarious nature of my continued survival.

“What _about_ the police?” He stood up, stalking away from the table, “Like they do _anything_.”

For the next few days, the Joker and Harley vanished, likely preparing for said mischief, and ruining any chance of changing their minds. By this point, I’d realized that the thugs were _not_ going to hurt me unless I tried to sprint out the front door, and I bemoaned the outing to any of them that hung around the kitchen.

“I mean, there will be people waving guns around,” I told Angry Clown, and Sad Clown laughed.

“Boss is always wave gun around,” he put in, a smile in his voice. Angry Clown pointed at him, silently agreeing.

“Yeah, but…” I set down the potato I was peeling, “there will be _more_ than the boss. And I just know I’m gonna end up someone’s human shield.”

“What do ya think _happens_ in a heist?” Angry Clown snorted in his Gothamite accent, waving his own peeler at me, “We go in, we have some fun, the police show up and do nothing, then the Batman shows up and we all go home. Ya just gotta get Harley to cut down her shopping to fit in the time limit.”

Sad Clown nodded, and handed Angry Clown another potato. Angry Clown found peeling soothing, which I had learned rather quickly he needed. Unlike most of the others, his mask was very close to his personality.

“Besides,” Sad Clown added, “We will be in front; you, back. Entrance, then us, then you. Police and the Batman could not get to you. Gunfire from us goes other way.”

“Yeah, Harley’s takin’ you to the home design store toward the back she likes,” Angry Clown remarked, “They got some great drills. Go through anything.” I didn’t want to know what he needed them for. “You should pick out some colors and stuff.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, putting a finished potato to the side and reaching for the next.

“Like, paint, ya know?” Angry Clown waved vaguely, “If ya got some stuff in mind then it’ll get ya in and out faster so’s you don’t wet your pants if we start shootin’ the place up.”

“Thanks,” I said, dryly, “I’ll live and die by your gentle guidance.”

“See that ya do,” he replied, and I could hear the grin.

Rolling my eyes, I continued the preparations. I had never realized how _much_ food twenty six people (I finally had a head count of the thugs allowed in, plus Harley, the Joker, and myself) actually ate until I needed to make it everyday, and set a grocery list as well. Part of me still harbored the delusion that the food was all being _bought_ at _stores_ , and it did amuse that side of me to think of our thugs wandering a grocery store in search of the cheapest parsnips, but realistically, I knew it wasn’t true. Even if money changed hands, the money was bound to be stolen or due to stolen goods anyway. The food, then, was as good as. That might have been another reason I wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming trip. Breaking all those pretty delusions into so much sparkly dust.

“At least they don’t want _me_ to hold a gun,” I muttered, and the clowns burst out into laughter at the very thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will I continue this?  
> Maybe  
> When?  
> MAYBE

“You’re letting  _ me _ decide?” Harley squealed on my own personal D-Day, “On everything?”

“Yeah,” I resisted a shrug as she heaved a dead man’s bulletproof vest over my shoulders, “I couldn’t think of anything.” There were blood stains all down the front- like a slit throat had been weeping above it. “Wow, this didn’t do  _ anything  _ for whoever had it before me.”

“Don’t recall what happened to ‘em,” she chirped, and a conflicted look overtook her face, “But, pumpkin, don’t you want a  _ little  _ input about what your room’s gonna look like? If I just do it all, it won’t really be  _ your  _ room.”

“Well, technically it’s the Joker’s room,” I put in and received a whack to the back of the head that didn’t  _ really  _ hurt.

“ _ Technically _ , it’s actually some Frederick Walter’s room,” she retorted snottily, “I don’t think  _ technically  _ has a place in sentiment.”

“Fine,” I said, and tried to think of some way to contribute to the oncoming design event that would appease Harley. “I guess I like… Green?”

She turned toward me, “Mint green?”

“I just- green. I like green, all the green.”

A frown, “Apple green? Ivy’s eyes green? Mistah J’s hair green?”

“Yes,” I agreed for the sake of getting it out of the way.

“Huh,” she put a finger to her cheek and walked from the room. A moment later, I heard a shriek and Harley’s name before she pranced back in with a satisfied look on her face, scissors in one hand and a small clump of green hair in the other.

“What would you have done if I picked Poison Ivy’s eyes?” I asked, partially impressed and partially terrified. Harley dug in her purse and pulled out her cellphone, the background of which was Poison Ivy pouting, wide-eyed, up at the camera. “So we couldn’t take a picture of the Joker’s hair because…?”

“He only likes having his picture in the paper,” she raised a finger, “or on TV,” another finger, and she lowered her voice in a mockery of the Joker’s, waggling the fingers scoldingly, “ _ not on your cellphone, Harley! _ ”

“He’s a little harsh on you, huh?” I asked as she linked arms with me to lead me from the room.

“He loves me really,” she said with a flippant grin, pulling up her hood with her free hand, “Now let’s get going!” A sack dropped over my head and I sighed in relief.

“Too scratchy for you?” The Joker mocked.

“No, I’m just glad I won’t know where the apartment is, boss,” I informed him truthfully, and I could  _ feel  _ Harley grinning. 

Fingers brushed the center of my chest lightly, “You’re some kind of kid, Abner.” The Joker laughed, “Stupid, though.”

“No, Mistah J, don’t be so harsh. He’s got a head on his shoulders that keeps his head on his shoulders,” Harley cooed, tugging me closer to her side and setting us walking.

“Cute, Harley,” the Joker snarked, and his footsteps tapped away.

“Alright, we’ll travel in our own getaway car there,” Harley informed me, “’Cause even if they don’t do nothing else, the police do like taking cars, and it’s good to have more than you need, so you don’t gotta be hotwirin’ with bullets whizzing past your ponytails.”

“I think that scenario is specific to you,” I replied, and she elbowed me a little too hard.

“We can grow your hair out, wifey.”

“Ow,” I complained, rubbing my side.

The trip was nothing to write home about ( _ not that I seemed to have a home or even a place of residence anymore judging by my foster family’s compliance with Harley _ ) what with the sack over my head. When we were sufficiently far enough from the base to take it off, there was only a minute or two of buildings and people passing by before we arrived at the mall. Harley parked in a handicap-only spot, hanging a forged or stolen placard on the rear-view mirror to prevent the vehicle from being towed, and dragged me into the building.

“Okay, we got ourselves here thirty minutes before the main event so we can make it out of the line of fire and to the store before it starts up,” she explained, unnecessarily, as I’d been told versions of this by the Joker and the thugs all throughout the day preceding the raid, “So walk fast, pumpkin.”

“Won’t everyone freak out when they see…” I gestured up and down at her outfit, and she paused just outside the door. I expected her to tell me off, that supervillains planned for and thought of everything. Unfortunately…

“Okay, Abby-boy,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders, “Time for a crash course in shoplifting.”

What was I doing with my life. Harley had rapid-fired advice at me, but it all faded in the face of my apprehension. I was walking into a shop, where they had phones, which could call the police or something, and I was planning on walking out again with stolen goods for a supervillain’s disguise instead of  _ saving myself _ .

_ Then again _ , I reminded myself forlornly as I shrugged on a jacket that could cover Harley’s collar and slipped the jeans under it, holding them to my chest,  _ haven’t I already decided that any action on my part is likely to backfire, anyway?  _ As long as Harley kept her hood down, she probably didn’t need a hat. Her makeup might have to go, though.  _ So, this isn’t actually  _ that  _ crazy. _ I could swear the shopkeep was giving me weird looks on the way out, but I blessed large corporations’ policy on not offending customers by accusing or even too obviously suspecting customers of shoplifting without absolute certainty. It seemed she was unwilling to risk the chance that I was just a regular customer who had bought the jacket here previously. Of course, she might think I was a minion or thug of a local supervillain willing to kill for the smallest reasons (which was half true) and that could ever so slightly discourage her from interfering.

It’s not as if it was all that uncommon. Maybe one in ten Gothamites worked for a criminal, whether intentionally or not, and with the high concentration of supervillains in our underworld, well…

Let’s just say that shopkeep was one smart cookie.

Harley received my choices with tuts over my lacking fashion sense, before pulling them on over her suit and removing her hood.

“The make up?” I asked weakly, well aware she’d already made concessions that had eaten up a good ten minutes of our get-out-of-the-way time. Harley waved me off as I’d been mostly certain she would.

“I’m goth, now,” she stuck out her tongue and laughed, “Don’t worry  _ too  _ much, pumpkin. We gotta focus and get ta the shop.” I nodded and tagged along slightly behind her as she set off. When I’d entered the mall before, I’d been focused on my goal with no small amount of nerves keeping the tunnel vision steady, but it was almost… jarring to see so many people walking around like it was nothing, and without clown masks on.

The rational part of me was horrified at how I’d grown accustomed to my imprisonment, but it didn’t stop me from edging a little closer to - _ familiar crazy happy-  _ Harley and trying to ignore the – _ so many-  _ people wandering about. Was this how it had always been? In the apartment, the most people there ever were stretched just past twenty, but there might have been a few hundred people in the mall right then.

Harley either did not notice or did not care about my internal turmoil. I was not surprised.

“We’re here!” she crowed, and dragged me into a home improvement and furniture store, “We’ll find paint first. If the pillows and stuff don’t match the paint, it’s all useless anyway.” From somewhere on her person, she took out a small square of plywood, “Since we need to see the paint on the wall to really see the color, I took a bit of it with me.”

“You took a piece of wall,” I repeated, hoping I’d heard wrong.

“We can just,” she made a “sploosh” sound effect and smoothing hand motion, “plaster it back in.”

“…Yeah, okay,” I turned to stare blankly at the color cards and wonder when my life became a comedy routine. Likely when a villain named  _ the Joker _ kidnapped me. Well, that didn’t take too long to figure out.

“Alright,” Harley took out her clump of Joker hair and handed me half, “Find this color. I’ll go find complementary colored curtains and stuff and bring them by for ya to see.”

I didn’t really own much in life and in the extended panic attack that was my captivity, I think I could be excused for the way my mind went.  _ This is mine, now,  _ I thought to myself inanely and clutched the weirdest thing that had ever been handed to me, meandering down the aisle just as the first bangs of gunfire and maniacal laughter drifted in the door of the shop. The sole employee, obviously a native of Gotham, immediately hit the deck and crawled to the fire exit, abandoning all customers to their grisly demise without batting an eye. As you do.

A thug popped his or her head in, nodded at me, and shot some sort of expanding glue at the fire exit before moving on to the next store.

Little too late for that, seeing as the clerk was gone with the wind.

It was when I was holding my sample of Joker hair up against a color card that looked promising that someone bumped into me.

His face was immediately recognizable.

“Dick Grayson,” I said automatically, and he gaped at me a moment before pointing a finger dangerously close to my eye.

“Abner Salts!” He pushed my shoulder, “We all thought you got taken or killed or mutated or something! Where have you been!”

“Might want to keep your voice down,” I reminded him, nodding in the general direction of the sound of fighting. He jolted, and glanced around nervously. He’d probably been looking for a place to hide before he bumped into me.

“Yeah, we need to get you out of here,” he said decisively, assessing the store wall and blocked fire exit as if for possible weaknesses he could exploit.

“Unless you carry around glue solvent designed for Joker inventions,” I returned covertly to my color comparing, holding the card and hair clump close to my chest, “we’re out of luck.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure which of the last two were closest in color to Joker hair. I wasn’t sure we even needed the little clumps, when Harley could probably pick out the color without any reference whatsoever, but, again, no arguing the little things with the crazy people.

“We’ll make a break for it in the front,” Dick was saying, like the very people I’d just been thinking about, “I’ll distract them and you’ll run.”

“What. No,” I held up some fingers before he could protest something stupid like:  _ it’s the only way _ , “Three reasons. One: I don’t care what your mysterious pre-Gotham background is, that does not make you the Batman. Two: they haven’t even  _ looked  _ at this store funny except to seal the exit and leave. That implies we can wait it out. Three: there are  _ guns  _ and  _ madmen  _ out there.” For some reason, Dick was still looking all determined and martyr-like, so I emphasized, “ _ Guns _ , Dick;  _ madmen _ .”

“I can deal with them,” he replied grimly, and I wondered what the hell was wrong with his brain.

“No, you can’t!” I waved my arms at the door, “That’s big league villainy out there and you’re a scrawny senior in high school who-” Reaching out and grabbing his wrists, I made use of his surprise to drag him back, knock him to the floor, and sit on him in one smooth, panic-fueled motion. Once this was done and the high of completely surprised triumph came and went, I finished my sentence, “-who isn’t going anywhere.” Really, I had not expected that to work.

“Abner, look, I don’t want to hurt you, but…” he started to protest, but sighed, “Okay, there are things you don’t know about me-”

“Yeah,” I cut in, “Lots, probably. This does not mean I let friends go and kill themselves just ‘cause they’re crazy.” Which… sort of applied to Harley, too. …Maybe the Joker. Luckily,  _ they  _ were the bad guys, and their enemies were much less inclined to  _ kill  _ them. Thus, I’d never need to worry about the growing Stockholm syndrome twisting my psyche in terms of protecting the two crazies. Right.

I could hear the Joker’s laugh in my freaking bones.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” I said, maybe too loudly, “Just stay here and be safe.”

“Pumpkin, if this is your way of saying ya want a pet,” Harley appeared out of thin air in her full glory, laden with drapery and a few throw pillows in various shades of teal and green, “I gotta tell ya, you’re just to the edge of what my puddin’ can handle in the house.”

“Don’t just demote me to pet, please,” I replied, knowing how pathetic I sounded and not caring anymore. Dick stiffened, and I addressed his concerns, “She’s probably not going to hurt you, or kidnap you. I think one captive is enough.”

“Oh, really?” His voice was strained, and for some reason or another, he was turning his face away, trying not to meet Harley’s eyes. I guess he was just as terrified by Harley as I was the first time I saw her. His countenance didn’t really scream  _ fear  _ to me, but everyone emotes in different ways.

“Yeah, funny story,” I laughed, but it fell flat, “Turns out I really should’ve taken that ride you offered me last time we saw each other.”

“We thought we’d caught a little bird and it turned out ta be a little housewife,” Harley mused, chucking me under the chin, and Dick was like stone beneath me- I wasn’t sure he was breathing. Oblivious as usual to the social climate, Harley presented me the drapes, “How do ya feel about these lacey ones?”

“There are no windows,” I pointed out, continuing with the conversation since it seemed to keep Dick in a perpetual state of shock and thus, a state of  _ not running out in front of the guns and madmen _ , “Otherwise I’d be dead by now.”

“True,” she conceded, “but  _ someday _ we might have windows.”

Flatly, then, “When I’m well and truly in the grips of Stockholm syndrome and the world is at the Joker’s fingertips?”

She snapped her fingers cheerily, “Exactly. So. Long and elegant or polka dotted fun?”

Honestly, I’m not sure how long it took for Dick to break out of his dazed thoughts. I knew I’d talked Harley down from curtains entirely, and distracted her for all of two seconds with my dilemma about the paint color (she did  _ not  _ need those hair clumps), before giving into three throw pillows Harley thought were cute.

It was on the fourth that I found my spine again.

“I don’t really  _ need  _ throw pillows at all,” I wheedled, “I’m grateful I have a bed; it doesn’t need decorating.”

“You were kidnapped by the Joker,” Dick cut off Harley’s response quietly, and his voice cut through the strange, false levity like a knife through butter. At once, the atmosphere dropped into something cold and uncomfortable. “You vanished because you were kidnapped by the craziest criminal in Gotham- because they thought you were  _ Robin _ and no one realized it for… For over a month?”

“To be fair,” I put in hesitantly, unsure what to do with this line of thought, “My fosters probably wouldn’t put out a missing person’s on me, and the Joker didn’t exactly advertise my presence.”

“That’s not the point,” he snapped, which looked a little ridiculous when he was busy being restrained by my weight on the floor of a home improvement and furniture shop. Dick seemed surprised at his own vitriol, and visibly calmed himself, glancing at Harley and lowering his voice, “We can escape. Right now. I can help you.”

I couldn’t help it; I snorted. Did anyone remember my vow not to lift a finger unless the Batman himself…? Right, other people don’t live in my brain. Nor are they all as observant as the Joker.

“That’s nice,” I soothed Dick, patting his hair condescendingly, “You’re very brave and martyr-like and determined again. And still crazy.” He was looking indignant now and I sighed, throwing Harley a look and making up my mind to just say it, even if one of my captors was listening intently, “Look, Dick. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just that I don’t think anything you or I could do would matter against these guys. I mean,  _ Harley and the Joker _ , they’re legendary. They’re not people that normal people like us can fight. The Batman? Sure. Robin and the Batgirl? I guess so, since they’re not dead yet. But guys like us?” I gestured between us helplessly, “We’re statistics. We’re a body count waiting to happen. It may be the Stockholm speaking, but since the Joker took me captive, I don’t think I’ve ever been safer. Sure he may decide to kill me if I screw up one of his scenes,” Harley winced, her smile vaguely apologetic, “but that’s  _ one  _ supervillain out of however many Gotham spawns, and even if I don’t know what the  _ game  _ is much less the rules, there still  _ are  _ rules. Otherwise, on a good day, any number of small time to insanely powerful people may swat me out of existence because I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time- which is  _ most  _ of Gotham, for probably 23 hours of the day.” What I was trying to get across was that  _ there was no way _ I was going to fight the Joker and Harley, or try to escape them, unless it was as foolproof and safe as could be- which likely meant I never would. Unless the Batman was standing there with his arms outstretched…. Harley was right there, listening though, so what I said was, “I’m not  _ going _ to try to escape them, at all.”

“Abner,” Dick tried again, but Harley slapped a throw pillow across his face.

“He wants ta stay with his family!” she decreed, stars shining in her eyes at the idea, and I barely resisted wiping a hand down my face in exasperation. 

“Harley,” I tried, but she lifted me bodily and plunked me into a cart, tossing the throw pillows on top of me. “Hey, wait-“ Struggling up, I could just barely turn around to see Dick lifting himself from the floor. Harley took a sharp turn, laughing, and I fell back beneath the pillows, one arm flailing helplessly.  _ I hope he doesn’t end up _ … I scowled, it was up to Dick, now; whatever he did was on him. Seriously, though with the kind of stupid he was displaying, I was surprised he’d stayed alive so long in Gotham. Maybe Gotham just works differently for rich people.

“These,” Harley said decisively, dumping a set of sheets into my lap along with the pillows, before a bunch of sticky tack, and she somehow had skidded to a halt with three posters held in front of her before I had time to breathe. “Which one?” she demanded, speed-shopping for our lives.

“Uh, the-“ the left was unicorns, the middle was some rock band I’d never heard of, and the right was skulls, “The middle!”

She dropped it onto me and threw the others haphazardly behind her, “We’ve lost some time, sweetcheeks, so we’re gonna go a little faster.”

“Faster?” I squeaked, and she winked.

We burst out of the store not five minutes later with Harley grinning madly and pushing the cart – which almost overflowed with both myself and the beddings and decorations and paint Harley had shoved on top of me – at breakneck speeds. I could  _ hear  _ her lighting something and glanced down to see the rocket she’d attached without a single pause in the speed-shopping to the previously innocent cart.

“Tally ho!” she shouted, leaping onto the back of the cart as we approached the steps leading to the front of the mall, “Hold your fire, boys!”

As the stairs approached, my shout grew to a scream that became progressively shriller. We bounced down the stairs with a near-miraculous grace and shot out past the amused henchmen and through the bewildered policemen. One of the officers shouted out that Harley had a hostage and in the only moment of lucid thought I would be spared, I murmured effusive praise for whatever power gifted that woman with her eyesight. The moment passed. See, the mall’s located on top of a hill.

Harley’s manic laughter was lost in the renewed screaming coming from her unwilling passenger.

Me. It was me. If that was not clear. Screaming like I could see Death leaning over me with scythe raised high for a reaping. Which it definitely  _ was  _ with the number of close calls and honking cars screeching to dramatic movie halts whizzed by, the interruption of city traffic blaring and distorting in my ears as we sped through the city. It was just as I’d resigned myself to a messy death that Harley directed the cart towards another hill, slowing as we reached the top before coming to a surprisingly gentle stop in a perfectly positioned parallel park. Harley shoved some throw pillows into my arms along with sheets and wrapped the comforter around my shoulders, miraculously handling the rest herself, paints cans hanging from the crooks of her arms, and turned to go. Then she turned back. With a snap of her fingers, she approached the next nearest parking meter and smashed it open with a single, well-aimed kick.

“Be a dear and pay the meter, wifey,” Harley cooed, cackling as I shuffled forward, struggling to obey through the bedding on and around me. Even trying to follow the law broke the law when they were involved.

_ At least _ , I thought,  _ the chaos is over _ . I must have underestimated the power of home decorating.

See, the room was painted via firehose. Harley’s pile of goodies sat in the living room, waiting until the room was dry enough to live in, along with the furniture Harley and the Joker had “supervised” myself and the henchmen getting out of the bedroom. It really was the green of Joker’s hair- when the paint was wet, anyway.

He’d looked pleased with the hassle of the remodel when he came across Harley and I gasping in fresh air during a fume break, and had chucked me under the chin in a motion reminiscent of Harley before going about his business again.

They both seemed to enjoy the gesture a little too much. Sometimes I wondered if they were imagining guns in their hands when they did it. In the store, I’d thought Harley whispered, “pew-pew!”

Well, as long as they continued to keep such guns imaginary.

I still had to sleep in the living room until the paint was dry. Even if Harley hadn’t forbidden me from entering the Room of Fume until it aired out, I wouldn’t have been able to stand it for very long. The Joker, however, had not quite gotten the memo.

Currently we were at opposite ends of the couch. I was curled in a nest of new bedding on one side, trying desperately to ignore the flashing lights and quiet noise of the television, and the Joker sat flipping idly through channels at the other end.

_ I’m going to end up burning myself at some point tomorrow _ , I realized grimly when the cuckoo clock on the wall struck midnight,  _ I’ll probably put all the wrong ingredients together in a haze and then pass out on the stove top. _

Well, maybe it wouldn’t go  _ that  _ far.

…But I was tired and I’d have to wake up early and I couldn’t say anything-

The Joker glanced at me nonchalantly, and a smirk tugged at his lips.

_ He knew exactly what he was doing. _

No, that was it. That cart ride through certain death. The constant fear for my life. The lack of sleep. The threats, the insinuations, the mind games, the  _ kidnapping in the first place _ -

I snapped. Sitting straight up, I lunged practically into the Joker’s lap and grabbed the remote from his strangely lax grip and turned off the TV, tossing the remote violently at the wall behind it. It bounced off harmlessly and skittered across the floor.

The moment of insanity passed remarkably quickly.

_ What had I just done?  _ I froze, still suspended partially over the Joker’s lap and tried to will myself to look at his face. I nearly turned my head, but the motion wouldn’t make the leap from thought to reality and I remained staring at his empty hand. Still I tried to glean what I could from it.

His hand wasn’t clutching the arm of the couch. It wasn’t clutching my throat, either. It was just lying there. Slack. He still wasn’t saying anything.

Maybe… Maybe he was so angry he’d just stab me without a word. Or he was thinking of the best way to kill me.

In the instant I thought this, his hand moved, coming up to my throat and resting on it, not pressing or squeezing, but lying dormant with the threat of it.

“I’m so sorry,” I breathed, “I don’t know what-“

“And you were doing so well,” the Joker interrupted, his fingers idly moving across the skin of my throat in a stabilizing pattern. “I’m in a good mood, Abby-boy, so I’ll let this pass this once. On account of your good behavior until now. If you want something from me, you  _ ask  _ me,” he scraped his nails lightly over my jugular, “very, very nicely.” I was still frozen, and he pressed, “Understand?”

I nodded, frantically, breaking the self-imposed paralysis and I tensed to return to my previous position as soon as the Joker released my neck. I had expected him to, which was probably my first mistake, and when his threatened strangling turned into an idle stroking I felt something squirm in me uncomfortably.

“Strange how soft the skin of the young can be,” the Joker mused, and his hands migrated, pushing and pulling until my head was resting in his lap, back mostly flat against the couch, so he could continue petting my throat as if it were a spoiled cat, “Do parents and children do this sort of thing often?”

I took in a breath to respond, not realizing I’d been holding it until then, “I don’t think so.” Belatedly, hesitantly, I remembered to add, “Boss.”

“They should; it’s very soothing,” he decided, and I bit back an acerbic,  _ for you _ , but he got the message perfectly clear from my expression, rolling his eyes, “Yes, well, Harley may like it.”  _ Harley would like anything you did to her.  _ Again, he seemed fully aware of what went through my head, but seemed to dismiss it with another quick smirk, “So, how’s your day been, kid? Get all your shopping done?”

Carefully, I considered my response. I’d unwittingly stepped into one of the Joker’s  _ scenes _ , it seemed, and I wasn’t quite sure which one this was. “Harley and I got everything we needed, Boss.” I glanced up at him and added, uncertainly, “Thank you.” When his only response was to stop the creepy throat-stroking and raise an eyebrow at me, I hastened to explain, “I mean, for, um, basically taking us out shopping to- to spruce up my new room?”

His fingers idly began moving once more, and the silence stretched until I was sure he was no longer going to reply when, “Green, huh?” My confusion must have been as obvious as the rest of my thoughts, because he pointed up at his own hair and pulled a face, “I know how Harley thinks.”

Now I really didn’t want to tell him I’d picked green just because it was the first color that came to mind. “It’s my favorite,” I lied. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about colors and a part of me was dying inside that even the  _ Joker _ made small talk about color preferences. I didn’t try to make excuses for Harley’s behavior because  _ surely _ the Joker knew her better than I did.

“You couldn’ta told her you liked  _ forest green _ or something?” he groused, but there was a lack of the homicidal spark that edged his usual whining; it probably had to do with the domesticity of the scene in his head. When he was feeling suitably in the mood for it, his henchmen could even make a joke or two at his expense- just had to read the scene.

Of course, not all of them did. There was an incredibly steep learning curve when mistakes typically involved a sudden addition of lead to your body.

“I’d figured she’d have the color of your hair memorized by now,” came spilling out of my mouth in a direct defiance of that learning curve I’d been thinking about.

The Joker snorted, and patted my throat none-too-gently, unintentionally forcing me to swallow and cough, “You’re not a bad kid, Abner. And you’ve got good taste in greens, even if you’re not so smart about it.”

Did I mention he’s forever remarking on my stupidity?

Maybe I deserved it for  _ how exactly  _ I managed to wind up in this position in the first place.

The Joker’s strokes lengthened, sliding up to my jaw and then down to my collarbone, and eventually my body just couldn’t handle the adrenaline of fear any longer and I crashed. No, I didn’t miraculously relax under the Joker’s  _ tender ministrations _ , I just overloaded so far into fear I basically passed out.

Like a sane person.

I didn’t remember falling asleep – or at least into unconsciousness - the next morning, and what woke me up was the addition of a hand to my stomach. Drowsily, I took in the red and black blur giggling in front of me, and the still-present weight on my throat, before glancing upwards.

“Morning Harley,” the Joker muttered, “Morning Abner.”

“Your back is going to hurt all day,” Harley informed him sweetly, still actually rubbing my stomach as if I were a dog. Was it better or worse than Joker’s threatening throat-feelsies? I honestly couldn’t decide. It kind of tickled.

The Joker ran his fingers over my throat once and stood, unceremoniously and without warning, forcing me to the side, where I sat up blearily on the couch and Harley removed her hand from my person with one last giggle.

“Breakfast,” the Joker ordered, but paused at actually glancing at me and added, smoothly, “In an hour or two.”

Harley plopped beside me as he left and ran fingers up through my hair, “It looks like you were styled by a hurricane.” She grinned, too close to my face for comfort, “I like it.”

“It feels how it looks,” I admitted, and she laughed, loud and almost honkingly.

“Well, it’s only a few more nights before the fumes air out,” she said, sounding rational and sane and- “Unless you like that sort of thing. Lou seems ta.” It was fun while it lasted.

At least the extra time would mean… Um... No, actually the amount of food I was making would take up the “hour or two” the Joker ever so kindly granted me. Had he not, it likely would have been the same routine except with the addition of his impatient presence lurking in the kitchen. It bothered him to no end if something was going on that he had no hand in, and he frequently wandered off with the henchmen even on the crime equivalent of milkruns due to the control freak paranoia that without his presence the hardened criminals he’d shaped into even scarier fanatics would dissolve into a pile of helpless, bleeding-heart goo should he look away for even a moment.

“Not like that,” his voice instructed from behind me, startling a jump from me before I could turn from the breakfast I’d begun on automatic.

“Boss?” I prompted warily. So far as I knew, I was following every whim he’d thrown at me about food preparation yet. There were even sprinkles out should the urge hit him.

“Smile,” the Joker pointed at me and demonstrated with a humorless grin, “You’re practically an honorary clown idiot by now and for some reason or another they work better when you’re smiling.”

That was incredibly touching on a scale of “didn’t kill me” to “won’t kill me yet.”

Yet, I didn’t particularly feel a smile coming on, so I forced the motion, probably looking as unnatural as the Joker’s.  _ Alright, boss? _ I wasn’t going to ask it out loud, but I got an answer anyway when he chucked me under the chin with a less psychotic smirk and left me to my own devices. Wait, did that mean I’d smiled here before? …I couldn’t recall.

Despite this promising start, he popped his head back in and tipped over a bowl at the edge of a counter before he was entirely gone, with an unconvincing, “Oops,” before the thing even hit the floor.

As I dropped resignedly to my knees to pick up the pieces, his laughter floated down the halls from wherever he’d strolled off to bother next, and I tried to keep my mind solely on the tasks at hand rather than what any of- what any of  _ any of this  _ meant.

It didn’t work very well. 

So, the henchmen liked me. I guess because things were less smelly and there was food on a vaguely regular schedule. The Joker actually  _ cared  _ that the henchmen liked me- or at least noticed and was more than willing to take advantage of the new information. Belatedly I wondered if this could make me potentially a double hostage- threatened to ensure the cooperation of hench and police alike. …Hopefully not. I hadn’t been used as a hostage yet- that I knew of, aside from Harley’s Crazed Cart Catastrophe- and I wasn’t about to tempt fate by lingering on the possibility too much.

Breakfast passed without much issue. However, the Joker  _ did not  _ meander off to wreak havoc on the city. Evidently some long term plan was in play, and the recent raid had been mostly for Harley rather than a planned endeavor. This left him free to have one of  _ those  _ days.

Yep, you guessed it. Follow-Abner-While-He-Works Day.

“…Do you remember to use the pattern I told you?”

“Yes, boss,” I droned dutifully, swiping across a mirror in the inefficient strokes the Joker had ‘taught’ me. He nodded sagely, perched on a nearby table with his ankles crossed daintily and his hands on his knees. I did not clean like this when he wasn’t home. But seeing as he-

Wait. Did I just think the word  _ home  _ in relation to my kidnapping?

Uneasily refocusing on the last corner of the mirror, I tried to put the line of thought out of my head. It wasn’t a big deal; it was just a turn of phrase that I’d been trained to use. After all, I used the word “home” for my foster family’s houses and apartments within a day each time I moved, even if the feeling wasn’t really there.

And it was just what you  _ said _ . I’m going home. Working from home. Even if you were in a hotel room half a world away from your actual home. You’d just say it on automatic. I hadn’t even referred to it as  _ my  _ home, but the Joker’s. So, clearly there was nothing to worry about anyway. A whole lot of mental drama about nothing.

Yep.

Except I’d definitely meant it when I said  _ home _ .

Aaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh.

“You look sour-faced, again,” the Joker noted, leaning his chin on one hand and smiling nastily, “What did I say about that?”

“There’s not any clowns around right now, boss,” I said, unthinkingly, still on automatic reply – call back soon, Abner’s having a minor panic attack.

He pouted, “What do you think  _ I  _ am?”

No. Nope. I wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot pole. NO. STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. Noo. I put the rag down and turned to face him, prompting him to sit up straight with a flicker of surprise. “Why am I here? What do you... want?”

I wanted to hit myself. Not thinking about  _ that  _ didn’t mean not thinking at all.

“…Boss,” he prompted, and I repeated it back to him dutifully, still waiting on a response that could clear up what the hell was going on.

“Please,” I added when the silence grew to be too much to bear, catching and keeping his gaze, “What do you want from me?”

His hand slid over his mouth in thought, his eyes calculating but not moving from mine, before he leaned in, pointing a finger at me as if he were pointing a gun, “Everything you’ve got.” He pulled the imaginary trigger, hand tipping back with the “recoil.” Then the grin was back – I hadn’t noticed its absence until it reappeared – and the finger was just a finger again as he tapped the tip of my nose. “You’re a very serious kid. We’ll work on it. I’ve got a good joke for beginners in the works.”

Blood drained from my face, “That’s okay, don’t go out of your way on my account, boss; I’m not worth it.”

And abruptly, he was very close, bearing yellowing teeth as his fingers gripped my chin just a little too hard, “On the contrary; we’ll have you laughing yet.” As his fingers slid off my chin, he made a face and conceded, “Maybe a little screaming first.”

I didn’t want to know; knowing wouldn’t stop whatever he was planning – well, maybe if I was the Batman, it would, but – but – there was nothing! Nothing I could do without getting  _ shot _ for my efforts!

When it comes right down to it, I’ve always been a coward. So, instead of hitting him in the head with the cleaning bottle, or fleeing for my life, or plotting to mirror signal some mysterious do-gooder through the cracks in the front door, I swallowed my panic and smiled. “Could we skip the screaming, boss?”

“ _ There’s _ the smile I asked for,” he said instead, laughing and ignoring the question. That was probably the best I’d get out of him, and for the rest of the day he was infuriatingly non-verbal. Humming without a tune, the Joker was merely a pair of eyes until lunch, and of course he started a new scene without any warning the instant he returned to the real world.

“Come here, Abby-boy,” he trilled once there was food in his hands and a seat under his butt; he was in the living room, oddly. Usually his scenes involving food took place at the overly large banquet table he favored. Obviously, I obeyed anyway.

“Yes, Boss?” I prompted when he made a show of looking me up and down and stroking his non-existent beard instead of speaking.

He giggled, unprovoked, and I felt a quiet chill of fear shiver up my spine before he cleared his throat and pointed at the floor in front of him, “Sit down.” Now, I really, really didn’t want to.

I moved hesitantly toward the space, and he twirled a finger, silently telling me to sit with my back to the couch… and to him. Sitting gingerly against the couch in front of him, leaning forward so as to avoid any contact with his pretzel style legs. He ate quietly for a while, putting a pointed finger in my field of vision to remind me to do the same, and once he’d likely finished, I heard a distinct popping noise, and the Joker was dragging me back by my collar to lean against the couch and his crossed legs. Tension that had never really died tightened its grip on my muscles again, but there was no gun pressed to my temple or knife to my throat, and no threatening neck-feelsies. Instead, the Joker spread something thick and cold through my hair, humming nonsensically to himself as he did.

“This is my own special blend,” he informed me, patting my cheek once with the substance and giggling, “So it’ll look  _ great  _ when it’s done.” I couldn’t nod, but I couldn’t speak either. Reaching a tentative finger up, I swiped it surreptitiously through the goop on my cheek and brought it down in front of me. It was dark, to the point of almost being black, but at certain angles there was a distinctly green tint to it as the light shone through. At least it wasn’t congealing blood.

“My, Abby-boy, that’s rather darker than I’d expect from you,” came the Joker’s amused voice, and I paled as I realized I’d spoken the last thought aloud without any knowledge of the type of scene the Joker was acting out, “Very morbid.”

He was clearly expecting a response, but I didn’t have one to give. “Yes, boss,” I agreed instead, since agreeing was usually a good way to avoid being shot. Unless you were agreeing with your own incompetence, of course. I’d seen a few of the messenger clowns – the ones that didn’t hang around here all the time – get shot for brownnosing a little too hard with the Joker’s unhappy assessment of them. His usual crowd would agree they’d made a mistake and then try to subtly remind the Joker of extenuating circumstances or reasons to keep them around. Granted, disagreeing with the Joker’s less than favorable assessment of you was a good way to get shot as well. It was a fine line to be walked, that was for certain.

“We’ll be going out next week, the three of us,” the Joker continued nonchalantly, pulling slightly at my hair for the fun of watching me try not to wince and thusly distracting me from the significance of his words, “Gotta teach you to get the joke, you know? You’ve got a good foundation, but we need to build on it.” He paused, and I could tell he was tapping his chin. Vindictively, I hoped the goop stained skin, despite the globs of it on my own cheek. “How do you feel about ‘Abnermal?’”

“…Boss?” I ventured warily, “What do you mean?”

“Abner is a difficult name,” the Joker replied without really responding to what I’d said, “Are you very attached to it? What about…” He detangled his fingers from my hair and leaned forward to spread his hands in front of us both, “ _ Asurbanipal _ .”

“Sure,” I agreed for the sake of avoiding  _ Abnermal _ . What was that, even?

“Nah, it’s a bit too on the nose for my tastes,” the Joker returned to kneading the goop into my hair, and at that point, I was pretty resigned to the idea that I was going to be sporting a different color up there for the foreseeable future. Still, the Joker attempting to  _ rename me _ was more of a cause for concern.

“What’s wrong with Abner?” I asked, quietly adding before I could be  _ reminded _ , “Boss?”

“It’s very muscleman,” the Joker told me with the air of a complaint, “And you are very not.”

“Thanks, Boss,” I muttered, and he laughed.

“So,” he drew the word out, trailing off for a moment before picking back up again, “Got any special skills?”

“…Housework?” I offered.

The Joker leaned around to look me in the eye, abruptly serious, “Do you really want Harley to be calling you the Housewife for the rest of eternity?” At the clear panic in my eyes, he nodded, easing back, “Then try to think of something else.” 

“Surviving?” I ventured next, because so far, not dying seemed like a real achievement.

“The Survivor,” the Joker tried out, before  _ audibly  _ making a face and a noise of disgust, “Sounds like a gameshow contestant.”

“I used to draw,” I said, getting a little desperate not to piss the Joker off by just being too pathetic to deal with, “and I’ve got a knack for math. I’ve also gotten really good at slipping past Bud and Lou without waking them up, or letting Scary – I mean Five notice when I’m in the area.” Scary Clown was my name for the female hench that Joker called Five and who could not be woken before noon without disastrous consequences. She’d held a gun to my cheek for a full five minutes once for putting a pot down too loudly at  _ eleven _ . We just  _ stood there _ in silence, with the muzzle of a gun pressed into my cheek, until Sad Clown came by and saved me. Scary Clown had muttered something about not intending to hurt me  _ just then _ and I’d steered clear of her ever since. “So, I guess I’m also good at not being noticed?”

“We’re not calling you Mr. Cellophane,” the Joker informed me flatly, and I couldn’t hold back the wince at the next hair pull. That seemed to perk him up, however. “What about things you like? Got anything special you like?”

Oh, God. This conversation was a mixture of terrifying and boring – it was life threatening small talk and I’d never been good at small talk in the first place. The Joker really needed to find someone  _ else  _ to do this with.

Well, I liked quiet. Mostly because I didn’t like loud noises or music, in fact,  _ most  _ music didn’t ‘speak’ to me. It was just another noise. What else did I like, though? I’d spent most of my time before the Joker just dealing with housework, homework, and avoiding the fosters… Okay, my life hadn’t changed dramatically except that I was no longer going to school, which was a bit of a shame. I actually liked school, even if I didn’t particularly like the people there. Well, Dick and Robbie were alright. I preferred Dick, though, since he didn’t expect me to fill the spaces in conversation. He seemed very at ease with a conversation partner that didn’t speak unless necessary, though I hadn’t noticed him having any other friends as quiet as I was. I hoped he was okay. Robbie, on the other hand, which was short for Roberta, prodded me into things I didn’t like doing more often than not, and seemed ready to prod me through dating and marriage if I ever gave the slightest hint of having a sexuality in any direction in her presence. She’d sort of decided on me one day, telling me that I was reliable, and a good future husband, and attaching herself from that day forward. I didn’t really like either gender, though, which originally struck me as another instance of how pathetic I was, not being able to even manifest a sexuality, before I came to terms with it. It was better than ending up married to Robbie. I mean she was great – but only in small doses.

It was during this interval that the Joker finally lost what little patience he’d managed to scrounge together in the first place and sighed, pressing a finger into my cheek and drawing it through the goop and eventually into a hook shape, “Might as well be Automaton, huh?”

“That’s fine, Boss,” I said, relieved. Anything was better than Abnermal.

“That was a joke,” the Joker said dryly, leaning over me to get eye contact once again with half a smirk on his face, “I was joking.”

“I like it,” I shrugged. Really, I sort of did. It took my lack of vigor and decisiveness and made it sound like something vaguely cool instead of pathetic.

“Okay, go wash off before your scalp turns colors,” the Joker shook his head, giggling as he patted my shoulder and added belatedly, “Automaton.”

“Yes, Boss,” I stood to do just that, and, miraculously, he let me go without changing his mind or adding anything further. The Joker just sat and laughed until I was out of earshot.

In the smaller bathroom least frequented by the clowns, it became clear the goop on my cheek had been fashioned into a lopsided J, and I splashed it with water, scrubbing at the stuff until any developing stain was gone and only then hopping into the shower. The bathrooms were a job in themselves, since there were only four of them between some 20-odd henchmen, with a fifth for the Joker and Harley’s seemingly exclusive use. The Joker’s floor of this apartment building had been “renovated” with walls being knocked down between apartments to form the several large, complicated common rooms, with a few nooks where the walls didn’t line up quite right or were only partially demolished. Only a single kitchen remained intact, which was where I spent a great deal of time cooking. It was a labyrinth, in truth, with enough nooks or bedrooms to house the henchmen the Joker liked best. Or hated least. Honestly, it was difficult to tell. …And somehow I’d lost track of what I was doing somewhere between getting the shampoo into my hair and standing idly under the lukewarm stream.

I shut off the water, toweling off my hair and then the rest before I stepped out of the shower to see what havoc the likely dye had wreaked on my hair.

Well.

It wasn’t Joker green, at least. Probably because my hair had been rather dark before he’d applied the dye, but it still had a very green sheen to it. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was expected to keep this up on my own, or if he’d let me grow it out and let it go. Fingering a still-damp strand, I determined that it now resembled nothing so much as dark seaweed and that wasn’t a flattering look. Not that many people would see me outside of the henches and- oh. Oh. The Joker wanted to take me on some sort of educational murder journey soon.

I supposed this would make the police slightly more likely to shoot at me. Teenagers don’t dye their hair in Gotham without a very good reason, or would that be a very bad reason? Whatever. At least it wasn’t readily apparent. If I wore a hat, would that be more or less likely to get me killed? Weighing the Joker’s possible displeasure against the police’s suspicion, I exited the bathroom, towel firmly in place and clothes in hand. It was late enough that I could change into nightclothes – though I was the only one who really cared about that sort of thing excepting, occasionally, the Joker in a mood. I’d still be cleaning for an hour or so more, but that was just maintenance. Luckily, neither the henchmen nor I wanted my presence in their rooms, so it was just the halls and the twisting common areas, along with the bathrooms, that needed upkeep. My schedule had dwindled from attempting to keep the date in mind, to at least the days of the week, to a list of  _ bathrooms, living room, dining room, halls _ day by day, with kitchen work being daily and thus, clean up there, as well.

“How about an apron?” I heard Harley say a room away during a rare moment when she and the Joker were both at home, as the big day neared, “Made of kevlar! But it has to be pink.”

“Why are you still on this housewife schtick?” the Joker shot back with an exaggerated groan, “I told you we went with Automaton.”

“He can be a housewife and an automaton; like an automated housewife,” Harley pointed out in a reasonable tone, and I edged around the door to the smaller sitting room they were enclosed in just a little too noisily. Sensing my footsteps and hearing the sweep of a broom, Harley poked her head out and we stared at one another for a moment as I froze, like prey in the line of sight of a predator. An indulgent smile spread across her face and she’d hooked me by the collar and yanked, sending me pinwheeling into the room, off-balance, with a pleased, “Gotcha!”

The Joker caught me and spun me around once, cackling, just to set me free and watch me stumble over to lean against the wall, dizzily. His laughter died down as he turned to a chest he’d been rummaging through, evidenced by the madly colorful fabrics and clothing items strewn about the room.

“What’s going on?” I asked Harley, though I was fairly certain I knew.

“We gotta get you some better clothes if we’re going to be seen with you out on the town,” the Joker answered, and Harley merely hummed her agreement, before diving back into the idea of a Kevlar apron with glee. The Joker took a different tact, and threw a variety of clothing items at my head, ignoring Harley altogether. “Try those on,” he said, when he’d finished, and Harley quieted, sitting back with the Joker as they gestured at me impatiently. I moved towards the door to obey, and the Joker snorted, “No, just do it here; I want to see how they fit, not wait through a fashion show.”

“But-“ I protested thoughtlessly, cutting myself off as my common sense caught up. Honestly, I wouldn’t even  _ really  _ have to strip, or anything, and Harley wasn’t exactly going to care what I looked like under my clothes. As long as the boxers stayed on, it was fine, right? Another series of impatient gestures from the peanut gallery and I reluctantly pulled off my shirt, immediately getting mocking wolf whistles from the Joker, before I jammed on a new button-up from the top of the pile and hastily did said buttons. A similar process repeated for the pants and I just knew that if I hadn’t hesitated initially, the Joker would not be sitting there with a cruel glint in his eye, catcalling his way through the fitting. Even if I hadn’t meant to, I  _ had  _ almost disobeyed him. And… oh, god this was orange and green. Dutifully, I made my way through the mad assemblages, occasionally going back to one or the other article when Harley or the Joker demanded it.

“This,” Harley finally,  _ finally _ decided, standing up and ruffling my hair, “Yellow and blue look nice with ya hair. Oooh, wait I’ve got a final touch.” As the outfits went, this one was almost boring, which was fine by me. An unruffled, non-glittery yellow t-shirt with blue polka dots and stretchy black pants with a single blue boot that rose to my knee paired with a yellow rain boot that was only half as tall. It didn’t matter, as they were easily concealed by the relatively normal black pants and thankfully, the soles were similar heights, so I didn’t feel as ridiculously off balance as I should. The Joker circled me creepily, more to agitate me than to look over the outfit, I was sure, until Harley bounced back into the room with two solid looking cuffs of what appeared to be gold with big, blue sapphires embedded in the front. “All the other housewives are gonna be so jealous,” she informed me, pushing the bracelets onto my wrists with no regard for my poor hands, “They’ll all see ya got the bestest husbands there are.”

Well, I probably got the best captive experience there was, at least, so… “Yeah,” I sighed in resigned agreement, prompting a squeal from Harley as she picked me up and spun me around in glee.

Soon enough she dropped me to bounce in place at the Joker’s shoulder, “Didja hear that, Mr. J? Didja? Didja? Didja?”

“I did, Harley,” he gave her an indulgent smile, even as his gaze flicked back to me in dark amusement, “I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise he's not going to be a supervillain or a cool sidekick or anything like that. The Laugh Attack Duo just wants him dressed up and under an alias when they go out for 1: the funsies and 2: the scene.
> 
> He's just their dolled up baby Alfred / rebellious child? / captive.


End file.
